Epistemic priority: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
||
Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
For example, the trajectory of a missile may be accounted equally well, in theory, for by special relativity, Newtonian mechanics, or the “gaze heuristic”. | For example, the trajectory of a missile may be accounted equally well, in theory, for by special relativity, Newtonian mechanics, or the “gaze heuristic”. | ||
Which, all other things being equal, should we prefer? Does one have, as a piece of credentialised technical knowledge about the world, “epistemic priority” over the others? | Which, [[ceteris paribus|all other things being equal]], should we prefer? Does one have, as a piece of credentialised technical knowledge about the world, “epistemic priority” over the others? | ||
You may not be surprised to hear opinions tend to be | You may not be surprised to hear opinions tend to be divide, cleanly, along [[magisteria]]l lines, with experts in competing programmes preferring their own. Few experts are agnostic. Epistemic scepticism is left to philosophers. The JC thinks this a pity. | ||
Some will appeal to the related concept of [[Occam’s razor]] — a [[heuristic]] to determine | Some domain masters — can we call them that? — will appeal to the related concept of [[Occam’s razor]] — a clever [[heuristic]] to determine the easiest explanation to go with — but it is just a rule of thumb and has no scientific rigour of its own. A [[lazy]], if useful, fudge but it has no ''epistemic priority'' either. | ||
Why does it matter? If it works, it works, doesn’t it? | Why does it even matter? If it works, it works, doesn’t it? Some — your correspondent included — would say quite so. | ||
Some — your correspondent included | |||
But there is a strand of scientism that sees science as an enterprise converging on “reality”, or “the truth” | But there is a strand of [[scientism]] that sees science as an enterprise converging on “reality”, or “the truth”, and not just “a handy set of tools for the time being”. To their program, progress — betterment against an abstract gold ideal — is an important quality. If we cannot be sure our theories are ascending a grand epistemic priority, they are worthless to us — diverting but, well, literally, diverting. | ||
On this theory there is at the top of that grand staircase (often the metaphor is literally inverted, and the progress described as a descent to fundamental structural engineering in the basement, but a stairway to heaven seems to us a much better image) a grand unifying theory of everything. when we have that, then — well, supporters of the grand unifying theory haven't carried on that thought experiment. But notice how it cleaves to the idea the universe is a bounded, time-bound, ''[[finite]]'' system. | On this theory there is at the top of that grand staircase (often the metaphor is literally inverted, and the progress described as a descent to fundamental structural engineering in the basement, but a stairway to heaven seems to us a much better image) a grand unifying theory of everything. when we have that, then — well, supporters of the grand unifying theory haven't carried on that thought experiment. But notice how it cleaves to the idea the universe is a bounded, time-bound, ''[[finite]]'' system. |